Men’s lacrosse players were the biggest illicit drug users among athletes competing in the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s 23 sanctioned sports, according to a survey by the governing body.
They led all other sports in the use of amphetamines, anabolic steroids, cocaine, marijuana and narcotics, according to the NCAA’s quadrennial survey, which included 20,474 responses from athletes for the 2009 school year.
The athletes were asked to voluntarily fill out forms anonymously, then mail them in postage-paid envelopes to a company that scanned them and put the answers into a database. The report offered no comparison with drug use in either the general population or college population as a whole.
Since the last survey in 2005, college athletes have increased their use of drugs including alcohol (83.1 percent, up from 77.5 percent), cigarettes (15.5 percent from 14.6 percent), marijuana (22.6 percent from 21.2 percent) and spit tobacco (17.4 percent from 15.7 percent).
Via www.bloomberg.com